So I messed up a little with my buttercream in the pics (sorry for that, my baking bad) but I can assure you the recipe below won’t yield such flat frosting because I had some insider tips from Victoria Yum who sells her marvellous cakes FULL TIME from Netil Market near Broadway Market in East London, SO, if you can’t be bothered to try your hand at these delicacies then head on down or order straight from their website (banana toffee are my absolute favourite *drooooooool*).

I was recently at Borough markets and got a BARGAIN on 3 punnets of strawberries (£1, I mean who could walk past that?!) so with an excess I’ve been making delicious chia seed ‘puddings’ for my breakfast and I froze a bunch (the reason my frosting was a flop is that I used the frozen berries and they had SO much extra water in them so make sure you use fresh).

Baking isn’t really my forte but the only way to get better at something is practice practice practice so I’ve been whipping up a storm in the way of cakes (much to the delight and dismay of my two lovely housemates) and perfecting these treats for you in time for Valentines Day so here you go lovers…

You’ll need an electric beater for this recipe (for the buttercream at least) unless you have a strong whipping hand but maybe save that for when you’ve finished dinner.

For the cakes (makes 12):

115g gf self raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

115g butter (softened)

115g caster sugar

2 eggs

8 tbsp milk

2 heaped tbsp of desiccated coconut

For the buttercream:

(Rule of thumb is double the weight of icing sugar to butter)

60g butter (softened)

120g icing sugar

1 tbsp rose water (you can usually find this in turkish supermarkets)

2 macerated strawberries (squash with a fork or use a mortar and pestle)

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees celcius.

Sift your flour, baking powder and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl

Beat your two eggs with the milk and add into your dry mix stirring through

Add the softened butter and use an electric beater to mix

Line your cupcake/ muffin pan with paper cases for your cupcakes and divide the mixture evenly

Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 mins or until golden brown and when a clean knife can be plunged into the cake and come out clean

Transfer the cakes to a wire rack and leave to cool (this will happen quite quickly so don’t fret you can taste test them sooner than you think

Now time to make your buttercream!

Use an electric mixer to whip the butter and add icing sugar bit by bit -not too much or you’ll end up like this:

Once you have a creamy and airy butter cream you can add the macerated strawberries and rose water and give one last whip.

If you’re not going to use this mixture straight away you can keep cool in the fridge (not for too long though as this will set hard like butter).

I’m no expert at piping but by all means give it a whirl with these beauties, you can always straighten the buttercream with a knife if you change your mind and don’t like your handiwork. I added a little powdered food colouring to get the bright colour in the pics but in honesty I didn’t eat the ones that had the colouring in them (even though it was ‘natural’), the fresh strawberries make for a lovely pink blush colour.

NOM appétit.

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Hi Alicia,
Hmmm neither myself or Georgia are based in America so thats a hard question- I’d recommend getting any muffin tin and putting the patty cake papers into them then filling with a dessert spoon, if the tin is a little smaller then it shouldnt be a problem the patty cake papers will hold in all the batter. Just be sure to double skin the papers so they hold their form. 🙂 Hope thats helpful otherwise you could always try a quick search on ebay for ‘deep cupcake pan’ or ‘muffin tin’ xx